Contract Killer
by TheDandyCrickette
Summary: When his employer ventures into The Pitt to help the slaves, Charon insists on going along to protect her but his precautions look to be a mistake when his contract suddenly changes hands.


Even with the weight of the contract behind her, she hadn't been able to convince Charon to stay behind when she climbed on the trolley with Wernher. He sat beside her in the half-light as she sewed his folded contract into the edge of the fabric of her slave garb. Their shared state of near undress as they rode into the mouth of Hell made him more uneasy than he was willing to admit – scared might have been the proper word. By the light of her Pip-Boy he could see the scars their travels had left on her – old bullet wounds and fresh scrapes and bruises breaking up her otherwise smooth flesh – and he couldn't help the cold pit in his chest as he anticipated the new scars this place would leave on her. They could not do anything to him that he had not experienced before but she was young and had so much more room to learn pain.

The end of the tunnel appeared in a haze of red smoke and Charon's employer coughed on the thick air. They exchanged a look of despair at the sight of the crumbling city under a dark, red sky. Charon put a large, ravaged hand on her shoulder and tried one last time to turn her from this course. "We do not have to do this."

She looked up at him, her despair replaced with steely determination. "Yes," she insisted, "we do. If there's a way to save them, we have to do it. I can't leave and let this go on."

Of course she couldn't. It was the same stubborn benevolence that made her give Ahzrukhal every cap she had for a tattered piece of paper and its tattered old man all those months ago in Underworld. The same attitude came over her time and again and it always got her into trouble. But he found he did admire that in her and couldn't think of a better use for his contract than defending her in her mission to right the world.

Wernher was behind them, too – armed and seedier than Charon would have liked. It was likely that, had he managed to convince his employer to go back, Wernher would have opposed them. Charon followed the lone wanderer to a small building where Wernher said they could hide their belongings, as anything they had would surely be confiscated as soon as they entered The Pitt. The ghoul bodyguard grumbled at the idea of leaving his prized shotgun behind. He felt incomplete without it, and his employer was making the same complaints about her own gun, but leaving them in hiding out here meant they were more likely to get them back if they left this place.

"Remember, don't step in for me if they get rough in there," his employer was saying for the third or fourth time when they heard a shout and had not yet gotten inside the building. Her words about not protecting her were little more than noise in his ears and he drew his gun on the raiders running at them. Just as quickly, she dragged his arm down and hissed "Don't!"

The raiders had their guns drawn, too, as they approached and Charon felt powerless. He tried to push his employer behind him but she moved between him and the Pitt raiders, spreading her empty hands out in front of her.

"Don't shoot!" she pleaded, making her voice small, "Please, don't!"

They didn't. Instead, the raiders surrounded Charon and his employer and stripped them of their weapons. Charon glanced around as he begrudgingly handed over his firearms and found that that bastard Wernher was nowhere in sight. He had disappeared as soon as trouble appeared. One of the raiders inspected Charon's shotgun, impressed, and holstered it with his own weapons and that riled the anger in Charon's chest even more than Wernher's disappearing act.

The man who had taken his shotgun then grabbed the lone wanderer and dragged her unceremoniously toward the entrance of The Pitt. His hand wrenched her arm at a dramatic angle and she screwed up her face at the pain but offered little resistance. Charon clenched his jaw and his fists to keep himself from forcefully separating them. It would be so easy for the raider to break her arm like that, but she wished to get into The Pitt without confrontation so he had no choice but to follow behind her with guns at his back.

The gatekeepers stepped forward to meet them, looking them over with critical surprise. And with good reason: neither Charon nor the lone wanderer were the standard fare for slaves. They leered at the lone wanderer and scowled at Charon in disgust. "What happened to you?" one asked.

Charon was silent for a moment before answering with no small hint of exasperation, "An explosion."

The gatekeepers shrugged at each other and pulled the lone wanderer and her bodyguard apart to search them for hidden weapons. They had nothing, of course, to avoid suspicion. The lone wanderer tried not to squirm away from their searching hands.

"You're pretty well-fed, aren'tcha?" one of the guards said as he felt her body and pinched her side with a laugh. Then she shrieked and he was shouting, "Hey, what's this!"

Before Charon could do anything, the guard had her top and was ripping the seams open, elbowing the screaming girl in the face when she lunged at him and tried to take the fabric back. She lurched backwards and landed on the ground with a grunt of pain. Blood dribbled out of her nose into her cupped hand as she looked up in horror at the guard who was just pulling the folded piece of paper from the fabric. Charon's heart went cold. He exchanged a glance with the lone wanderer, who looked equal parts terrified and apologetic. She covered her chest with her arms to hide her nakedness and mouthed, "I'm sorry."

The guard looked shocked as he read the contract and he looked Charon over with a newfound understanding. "These two aren't slaves," he announced, "they're up to something." They were seized. The lone wanderer struggled; Charon did not, could not. "With a contract like this," the guard was saying to Charon's…old…employer, "your ugly friend here wouldn't've let them bring you this far unless you told him to. So what're you planning?"

She remained obstinately silent, even when they struck her. Charon's heart ached and he reached out to stop them but his new employer, the guard, snapped at him to stand down, forcing Charon to stand by helplessly as they beat her bloody. Even then, she refused to answer.

The guard turned on Charon, ordered the information from him. At their feet, the lone wanderer shook her head at him pleadingly. The ghoul crossed his arms stubbornly. He owed her what loyalty he could hang on to and if he said anything the slaves would have their chance taken from them before they had an opportunity to act on it. "My contract only pertains to combat, I will not tell you," he insisted.

The bloody girl smiled up at him and thanked him hoarsely. Charon's employer slammed a booted foot into her ribs and sent her sprawling in the dirt. "Fine, if that's how you wanna be…" he snarled as he grabbed a gun from one of his compatriots and shoved it into Charon's hands. He accepted it readily, without thinking, and when he looked down he found it was his own shotgun. "Whatever it is, we're stopping it here. You're not gonna cause trouble now, we just have to make sure she doesn't either. Kill her."

Time slowed as his body began to move to carry out the order. He willed her to break free and _run_ but she did not have the strength. He checked the chamber and reloaded the gun, protesting that the girl did not need to die.

"That was an order," the guard said impatiently.

The lone wanderer's head had been bowed but she looked up at him now, her face pale under the dirt and blood, body trembling with fear. All of her stoicism was gone as she watched him. She had taken him out of hell and he would be lying if he said he did not consider her more of a friend than an employer after months of watching her ass in the Wastes. He cocked the gun. "I am sorry, smoothskin," he said, the gravel in his voice thicker than usual.

There were tears in her eyes and her breath caught in her throat when he put the gun in her face. Her eyes flickered in terror down the barrel but she wrenched them up to his face again and looked him in the eyes. "It's okay, Charon," she blubbered through her crying.

His finger squeezed the trigger before he was ready. The gun jolted back into his shoulder with a deafening bang and his smoothskin collapsed to the ground in a muddy pool of blood, her skull obliterated.

He managed to make it quick, at the very least. For a moment it was as if nothing in the world existed except him and the silence of her broken body. He had been a fool to think they could not teach him pain. Turning back to his employer to wait for his next order, Charon wished he could throw him to the ground and murder him as well and it grieved him that even his unbearable fury toward the man could not overcome the bonds of the contract. This one would go the same way as Ahzrukhal as soon as Charon got the chance.


End file.
